


Dedication

by nesrynfaliq



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Angst, Pre-Series, acomaf, bit of, flung in for good measure, poor little babies, seriously, this is very angsty, very vast amounts of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8363326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nesrynfaliq/pseuds/nesrynfaliq
Summary: Mor has been left for dead in the Autumn Court where she had been abandoned by her father and Eris, Azriel races to find her and bring her something safe before she succumbs to her wounds. As he searches for her, her name becomes a prayer on his lips as he begs her not to die, to hold on, just a little longer. 'A blade could not share her bed or her life or her love. It could never be worthy of her affection or her heart. It was a tool. It was useful. It was used. It was not treasured or cherished or beloved of any. But it could keep her from harm. It could keep her safe…He could do that.'





	1. Part 1: Shadow Song

When Azriel steps into the room his brother had summoned him to not even knowing the whisperings of his shadows could have prepared him for what he found within.

Cassian slumps in a chair, nearly doubled over on himself. His wings droop pathetically until they drag on the floor. His face is buried in his hands as though he can’t bear to look at any of them. And he sits still and silent.

Cassian was never silent and never still. He favoured action, always. Where others may be content to sit and plan and plot and analyse and debate he never was. He considered that to be a waste of time. The more dire and precarious a situation the more he wanted to act immediately. He trusted his gut and he acted on his instincts and did whatever he thought was right. Thoughts of the consequences came later. Usually when he was faced with them and had to think his way out of trouble. And that was if they ever came at all.

And Rhys. Rhys who had called him here and taken charge – always taking a charge, a leader without a crown – looks lost. Rhys whose power could already level a city with a thought and grows every day looks powerless. Rhys is paler than Azriel has ever seen him in all their years together. It looks as though he’s been trapped underground and away from sunlight for decades. And he’s shaking. His brother is shaking.

The shadows that sing secrets to him have no answer for him now and so he speaks. He is the one that breaks the silence between the three of them. _Him._ A warning to the world that something is very, very wrong.

“What happened?” he asks quietly.

Rhys only grips the back of the chair he’s bracing himself over, his knuckles turning white and the wood groaning at the pressure. He opens his mouth several times but words seem to fail him and he eventually lapses into hopeless silence, shaking his head.

It’s Cassian who finally manages to tell him.

“Morrigan,” he groans without raising his head. His voice is a hoarse rasp and he refuses to look at either Azriel or Rhys as he answers.

That one word, _her name_ , said in that way makes Azriel’s heart slam to a stop within the cage of his ribs. His body locks up and he snaps his eyes to Rhys, mutely appealing for a fuller explanation that he knows Cassian is unable to give right now.

Rhysand clears his throat and looks up at Az, his violet eyes shadowed and heavy. “Mor’s family learned....Learned about what she did with Cassian.” He still grinds out that mistake in such a way that Azriel knows it will cause a rift between his brothers for some time to come.

Beneath his broad, rough hands he knows his brother’s face is still faintly bruised. Relics of Rhys’ fists and the beating he’d given him when he found out what they’d done. He’d been seeing straight through to this moment. This is what had caused that rage. What exactly ‘this’ is Azriel still doesn’t know. But from the way his brothers have reacted...

His stomach churns horribly in fear for her.

“Eris refused the marriage,” Rhys says, his usually smooth, steady voice little more than a brittle whisper. “They punished her for it. Brutally.”

There were enough sickened layers in that last word that he didn’t want to press for further details. Not right now. Rhys is still trembling – with rage or fear or grief – he can’t be sure. And Cassian looks as though he might be sick at any moment.

 _As he should_ Az thinks viciously. _Fool, fool, fool, fool._ He pushes those thoughts away. It wasn’t Cassian’s fault, not truly. His brother had meant no harm, even if so much harm had been done by it. And this was punishment enough.

“When?” Azriel hears himself ask.

The horror he would think of later. The pain and the fear could wait until then too. For now he stuffs them roughly into that box in his head. The one in which he has hidden so much of his childhood in order to stop it destroying him. The one he had gotten very good at closing and keeping closed in the last few years.

He knew they thought him cold and empty and flat but he did not know how else to be. If he let himself feel a little he would feel it all and it would have killed him years ago. In that darkness in which he had lived and sunk into so deeply – until the darkness began to whisper its secrets to him- he’d had no choice. Shut down or die.

Rhys seems a little startled by the question and at the cool, calm way Azriel had asked it. “I don’t know,” he admits, his violet eyes shifting as they meet his own hazel. “My father only deigned to tell me about it an hour ago.”

It had probably happened some time in the night then. In that court of festering demons and monsters that was aptly named for the horrors it bred. But that was not so long. She was strong. She was so strong. She could still be alive. He could still find her. He _would_ still find her. He pushes down on that feeling too until it is as small and insignificant as the pain that had rattled him for all those years.

“Where is she?” he murmurs quietly.

 The shadows around him swirl and twist like agitated serpents, flying from his body, spearing out in all directions, all asking the same question. He does not give them orders. He does not tell them what to do or where to go. They respond to his will, his wants, his needs, even if he doesn’t always know what they are. They have a kind of life and intelligence of their own and he had trained them long ago to obey. They found him the secrets that he needed to know without him having to tell them what he needed exactly or where to find them.

The answer is whispered in his ears a heartbeat before Rhys says hollowly, “The Autumn Court.”

In a mess, neither has to add. A mess that her family no longer wishes to acknowledge. A mess that is now Eris’ to deal with. They have thrown her away, used and useless to them. They have thrown her away as she no longer has value to them, no longer has meaning, no longer even rates as a person any longer. Like an animal. Impossible to break to their will so it had been destroyed instead. Like a patch of rot, cut away before it tarnished the house it belonged to. Like a bastard boy shoved into a black pit to suffer for the crime of being born lest he live to stain his step-mother’s pride.

But he had survived. And so would she.

Azriel’s Siphons burn blue, like the reflection of a shooting star blazing on the surface of a lake. Rhys and Cassian’s ragged shouts of protest both come too late to stop him. He channels his power inwards, pressing it into his body, forcing it to become small, to become as insubstantial as his shadows, as smoke caught in a breeze. And then he vanishes.

It wasn’t winnowing, he had been told. Winnowing was like walking while magic reeled the desired destination in close. This was different. This was dangerous. The power that burned in his blood was not named the killing power for no reason. It was unstable and difficult to hone and control, even with the Siphons that glittered about his body. It was a force to be reckoned with. It was a force of nature and it had been created, as he had been, to destroy. One did not attempt to saddle a hurricane. But this is what he does now. For her.

For this girl. This burst of sunshine made flesh. This bright spark made of warm smiles such as he had never known, and easy laughter that echoed in his bones longer after she had gone. This girl with the power in her blood that burns and roars and calls to his. This girl with the rich velvet eyes he could spend a lifetime drowning in and still breathe thanks to the way she said his name. This girl his heart had dedicated itself to the moment their eyes had met across that war camp.

This girl who has been brutalized by her family – the way he had been. This girl who has been hurt and crippled and broken by the ones who should have treated her with gentle love and tender compassion. He had never known that. And likely never would. But he could try to find some – for her. To spare her from this. To save her; as he wished for so long that someone would have saved him. For her. For her he will do this. For her he would do anything.

For her he will dare. Dare to twist this power into something it was never intended to be. For her he will risk. Risk his position, his power, his life. For her he will dream. Dream for her as he never has for himself – that she might be allowed a little luck, that the Cauldron might smile upon her, that she might still live. And that this will not break her. That it will not steal the light that blazes in her soul like a sunrise. That this spot of darkness in her life will not condemn her to live the rest of her days within it as he will.

His lungs burn and scream for air and he thinks for a moment that he will die. The darkness presses in around him, tightening its arms in a death grip. His first tormenter who had somehow become his oldest friend. It would be fitting if it were the one to claim him. This crushing, pressing endlessness will not release him. He had tried too hard and dared too much to get her back and it will be the end of him. The end of her too. He’s sure of it.

 Then he forces himself to fight, to struggle, to scream, to leash that power and force it to obey him. He finds a spot of light before him; a single guiding star in the empty oblivion of the night and he launches himself towards it.

He bursts out into the clear open sky. His lungs expand and he gasps and gulps at the air for a heartbeat. And then he realises that he’s falling. With a growl he snaps open his wings and uses them to claw at the air around him. For any other Illyrian it would have been second nature to snap open their wings the moment they felt the embrace of the wind surround them. But Azriel’s instincts had been locked in that empty cell for more than a decade, even as he had. They did not how to respond to something they had barely felt or smelled or seen for years. He had tried to teach them, to reclaim them, but something had been lost to that endless blackness that he could never get back, no matter how hard he tried.

Rhys and Cassian flew as easily and thoughtlessly as they breathed. They no more had to command their wings to open or move any more than they had to order their hearts to beat. What they had simply done he had been forced to learn. And he had. He had learned. Learned so well that sometimes he could even kid himself into believing that he belonged here in the air the way they did. But it wasn’t home for him as it was for them, not truly. It was escape. It was better than where he had been. It was better than wherever else he might have gone. But it was not home. He had no home.

His power had taken him where he had needed to be, thanks to some Cauldron blessed miracle. All he asks is for one more miracle now. And it is not for himself that he prays. _Not dead_. Is how this new prayer goes. Over and over and over again. _Not dead. Not dead. Not dead. Please. Please. Not dead._ Part prayer, part plea, part defiant demand, part dark promise. Because if she is; if this world has taken her life for the crime of taking it back from her family he will unleash himself upon it. He will tear open its skin and shatter its bones and make it weep blood until it regrets what it’s done.

The night cloaks him as he flies over the Autumn Court. He is just another patch of inky sky as he soars over it, quiet as a ghost, as the shadows that wreathe him and flee into the darkness from whence they come. They blend in perfectly in the black, unholy places of this world. The places that he too belongs. Where they will never be seen or heard or felt. But tonight it is not secrets and lies that they search for. It is her. For any murmur of her voice, any whisper of her breath, any trace of her being upon this land.

 When after almost an hour they return to him the only songs they sing are silent.

Drained and exhausted due to the power it took to bring him here in one jump Azriel drops lower than he knows is wise. If he’s found here it will be the end of everything. He’s illegally crossed court borders in order to find Mor. _Mor_. The daughter of one of the most powerful males in the Court of Nightmares and, for arguments sake when they find an Illyrian bastard in their territory, still the bride of an Autumn prince.

 He doesn’t care.  

The sun is bulging over the lip of the horizon before the shadows he forces out again and again and again return to him with anything that might help. The rich Autumn wood seems to come alive as its vibrant colours, all varying shades of black by night, reveal themselves to him.  Bright yellows and rich oranges and deep reds burst around him sharply contrasting the soft white layer of snow that lies over the world like a heavy blanket.

Soft rays of light kiss the land around him and as his eyes scan the world slipping out from underneath him he sees it. He sees a glint of gold caught by the sun. He sees a flash of flame amidst the smothering carpet of pristine white snow. He sees a pulse of hope exploding into the darkness.

He sees her.

His heart lurches into his throat and the shadows wreathe him in a black cocoon - the night’s black answer to the pure, bright whites around them. They all whisper the same word. Her name. Over and over again like a frantic, dark heartbeat pounding against his skin. _Morrigan. Morrigan._   _Morrigan_.

But he would have known it was her without them. Even half buried in the deep snow he knows her. He would know her in silks or in leathers. He would know her even if this snow buried her completely. He would know her even if she changed every aspect of her appearance and self. Some deep part of him he had never truly explored and thought he would never understand would always know her, would always bring him to her.  

Heart still pounding so hard he thinks it may crack its ribs and burst free of his skin just to be near her Azriel descends down to her at near breakneck speed. He flares his wings sharply causing the muscles to scream in protest but he doesn’t care. He lands clumsily, kicking up a large flurry of the thick, wet snow. He lands in a way he hasn’t done since he was a child. Back when he had had almost no control over the wings that had felt so alien to him he wondered if they were really his at all or if they had merely been put there as some kind of cruel joke to torment him.

Collapsing to his knees beside her in the same movement as his messy landing Azriel studies her. She looks so small huddled here in the snow covered woods like this. In the camps she had seemed larger than any of the males there. She had burned so brightly she had cast everyone into such shadow. It was a place Azriel was used to being, the only place he felt at home and he had not minded. But he knew that others had; that others resented the power of presence that she wielded.

Only seventeen but already she had walked like a queen lacking only the crown. She had seemed to drown out the whole world; had made everything seem so insignificant with her smiles and her laughter. It was the same gift that Rhys possessed. To make others stop and notice you whenever you entered a room, however crowded it may have been. She had that too. Her beauty was responsible for part of it but only a part. The rest was simply _her_.

Without that, lying here still as death, stripped of that she seems lesser somehow. He despises himself for thinking that – what they want him to think, what the point of all of this was- but he can’t help himself. She lies like a puppet whose strings have been cut by the cruel marionette she had refused to dance for any longer. A broken doll so fragile and small.

Azriel is afraid to touch her.

He’s afraid to lay his battered, scarred hands on her. He had always hidden them from her in the camps, up sleeves and under tables, not wanting her to see them, ashamed of them. But she had not bothered with them in the slightest. She had grabbed one and held it tight in hers while she watched Cassian and Rhys fight until she had been unable to bear it anymore and had used her power to force them apart. But she had held his hand and she had not flinched at the rough, brutalised touch.

But he flinches from her now. Though his hands are only part of the problem. This close to her he can see that she is naked but it’s difficult to tell. She is clothed in bruises and broken skin. Her family’s doing he has no doubt. In punishment for daring to seize control of her own body they had shattered every bit of it they could and even her immense power and healing gifts had not been enough to tend to all the damage. He is scared, not simply of laying his twisted hands up on her, but of hurting her. There doesn’t seem to be a bit of smooth, unmarred skin anywhere for him to reach out to.  

But mostly he is afraid that if he touches her she will be as still and cold and unreachable as a frozen lake. She lies as though sleeping in the snow but he prays that she is. That sleep is all that’s come to claim her in this desolate, forgotten place.  Her hair, her beautiful golden hair is matted with red and crusted over with frost where the crimson blood has frozen around the edges. Her eyelashes are heavy with ice as well. It might have been beautiful, peaceful even, had it been a painting. But she is not a piece of art and he knows too well the agony that went into creating this moment.

Phantom pains burn through his hands and he clenches them as that cold rage pierces his heart like a shard of ice. He will hurt them for this, for what they’ve done. The slim, lethal blade at his side is honed to such an edge not for battle or defence but to cause pain. Azriel has no illusions about what he is. He is a monster that only the darkness had been able to befriend. Monsters might not be able to make their home in the sky or understand the rich warmth of easy laughter...But they can make all those who threaten the ones that they love bleed and suffer and regret their very birth.

Swallowing, Az steels himself and whispers prayers to whatever might be listening, his breath like white smoke in the frigid dawn air. _Don’t be dead_. It runs again. _Please don’t be dead. Please. Please. Don’t be dead Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead._ She’s strong, she’s so strong, and Azriel knows that. But the state that she’s in... And the amount of blood that’s stained the pristine snow around her and the bruises that batter her soft porcelain skin...

Trembling, Azriel reaches out and touches the top of her arm as gently as he can.

 Cold. So cold. As cold as-

“No,” he finds himself saying. He’s wildly shaking his head as though he can make it untrue, as though the force of his will and his horror and his grief can undo this. “No. No. No. No. No. _No_.”

Shrugging off the jacket he has on he wraps it gently around her battered body. She doesn’t react. Desperation sweeps away his doubts and insecurities and he eases his hands under her, murmuring faint apologies to her even though she can’t feel the pain the gesture should have caused her.

“Please,” he rasps hoarsely to her, stroking back her hair so he can see her face. He tucks her onto his lap, holding her close against him, trying to warm him. Hopelessness swelling like an abyss within his soul, threatening to swallow him, Azriel wraps his wings around Mor, cocooning them together in darkness. He cradles her against him, his arms wrapped tightly around her, trying to warm her, to bring her back to him.

“Please, please, Mor, please.” He whispers, rocking slowly back and forth on the frozen ground. Begging. He’s begging her for the impossible, for something he does not think she has the strength to give him. “Wake up,” he breathes, pressing the words onto her brow like a blessing. “Wake up, wake up, please. _Wake up_.”

Silence and stillness are his only responses.

 Shutting his eyes Azriel holds her close. He knows that he’s exposing himself out here in a foreign, hostile court. He crossed over into their borders in order to save the young bride they cast out to die. Given to them by her father she is theirs now, their subject, their _property_. If they find him here, cradling her body, they could have him punished, could have him killed, insignificant nobody bastard that he is. But he doesn’t move. He can’t just leave her here. He _won’t_ just leave her here.

A voice in the back of his head screams at him to go, to spread his wings, to fly. It’s the same voice that he’s listened to for eighteen years, the one that kept him alive through all those years. The only company he had in that dark cell they threw him in to. There had only been darkness. Some nights he dreamed that he was drowning in it. Some nights he dreamed the walls he couldn’t even see were closing in on him and would crush him while he slept. Darkness, and terror, and that voice, the only thing that kept him alive. And now he ignores it. For her.

Snow begins to fall around them. With his head buried beneath the shelter of his domed wings Azriel can’t see it. But he feels the chill that spreads in the air and feels the fat, heavy flakes fall onto his skin even as his shadows whisper to him about it. He shifts his position, the sharp frost cracking and crunching beneath him, refusing to budge.

A little longer. She just needs a little longer. Another minute. He can give her another minute.

And another.

And another.

 Another.

She lies still as death through them all. Her body so flat and light in his arms she might have been a ghost; he might have been cradling nothing but her spirit. He should go. He should go. He should leave her here and go. She’s gone. She’s de- But he can’t make himself think it. And he can’t give up on her now. Her family gave up on her. The whole damned world gave up on her. Azriel can’t bring himself to do the same. Not yet. _Not yet_.

“Morrigan,” he whispers softly. He presses the word onto the crown of her head like a prayer, like a blessing, like a death rattle. He would gift the final gasp of air in his lungs to her. Would use it to bend his lips around her name one more time. Would whisper that word once more and die with a smile upon his lips because of it. “ _Morrigan_.”

She stirs in his arms.

 ****


	2. Part 2: Dawn Chorus

_She stirs in his arms._

Azriel’s whole body goes taut at the feeling. He doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t dare breathe. He would command his heart to stop beating if he could in case it disturbed this moment.

“Morrigan?” he whispers softly, voice cracked and hoarse, body trembling as he waits, prays, for an answer.

The sun pushes fully above the horizon, the whole flat, yellow disc of it visible, hanging in the sky before them. Its stark rays shine through the black membrane of Azriel’s wings, making the veins within them burn as though they contain liquid fire. By the light that blazes through them he can see her face. So still, as though carved of stone, her eyes closed but-

“Azriel.”

Her lips barely move and the word is muffled against his chest. But it’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard in his entire life. Now he’s trembling, trembling around her and he can’t stop himself.  With his scarred hands he softly strokes back her blood matted hair.

They were not made for tenderness these hands. They were hardened in fire when he was just a child. Fire was not used to forge soft and gentle things. It was used to craft weapons- blades and swords and arrows- sharp and deadly tools. But for her he will be as gentle and careful as he can. He will let his steel melt just to treat her body with the tender reverence it deserves.

“It will be all right,” he whispers softly to her. “You will be all right now. I won’t let anything else happen to you. I won’t let them hurt you again. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

A blade could not share her bed or her life or her love. It could never be worthy of her affection or her heart. It was a tool. It was useful. It was used. It was not treasured or cherished or beloved of any. But it could keep her from harm. It could keep her safe…He could do that.

She’s slipped into unconsciousness again in his arms but Azriel thinks that might be for the best. The less she’s aware of herself and her surroundings right now, the better. Slowly unfurling his wings Azriel gives them a sharp snap, ridding them of the snow that had settled upon them. In the cold light of day her injuries look even worse than they had done when he had first stumbled across her in the pale half-lit dawn.

A calm so flat and still it chills, like ice sweeping across the surface of a lake, claiming all, settles in his blood at the sight. One day he will unleash himself upon them, upon every monster who did this to her. He will be the one that stalks through their nightmares for the rest of their miserable eternities. As he knows they will haunt hers. But for now he has to fly, he has to get her somewhere safe and find someone who can help her.

Azriel stands, trying not to jostle her too much in his arms. He’s almost painfully conscious of her slender form pressing against him. The delicate curve of her bones, the softness of her skin, the precise shape of her. He wraps her more tightly in his coat, wishing he had something else to give her to keep her warm. Then with one powerful stroke of his great, black wings, he launches them both into the stark, white sky.

Azriel flies as fast as he’s ever flown in his life. Faster. They had locked him up when he had been a child. Locked him up and chained him down and pinned his wings. They had been weak and limp and near useless when he had walked into those camps at eleven. Those camps had been brutal and harsh and terrifying. But nothing like what he had come from.

He had not known how to fly when he had arrived in them. He hadn’t loved the skies the way Rhys does and had not been able to fly as swiftly or as effortlessly as Cassian who seemed born to live among the clouds. It had not come easily to him. And so he had trained.

He had trained so hard and for so long that at times his brothers worried for him. They urged him to stop. They told him that he was going to hurt himself. But he only shrugged and continued with what he was doing. He had to make himself stronger. He had to teach himself things that came to the other boys by instinct. He had to learn how to make the wind sing to him the way it sang to his brothers.

They had eventually stopped asking and stopped fighting him as hard. But they had never understood. They had never understood because he had never told them what his greatest drive in those camps had been. The thing that had forced him into the skies again and again and again, no matter how badly it hurt or how much it terrified him, had not been love. It had not been wild delight at his new found freedom that had urged him to throw himself from cliffs in the middle of storms to strengthen his wings, to learn how to deal with those conditions. It had not been instinct that had made him learn how to fly faster and further and more deftly than those around him. It had been terror.

They had sent him to these camps to train when they had discovered he was a shadowsinger. But they could send him back just as easily. If he wasn’t good enough, if he wasn’t strong enough, swift enough, smart enough, they might stuff him back into that cage again. And he couldn’t go back. He _wouldn’t_ go back.

He had trained and trained and trained until it had damn near killed him. But in the end he could hold his own. In the end he could fly so well, so fast, for so long that they forgot what he was. And he almost forgot that he was a bastard born to darkness not the howl of the sky. He almost forgot that he had spent more than a decade with his wings pinned at his side, thin and weak and useless. He almost forgot that he was nobody and nothing because of how well he could fly. Almost.

He only hopes that it’s enough now. He had managed to save his own life with all that training, all that fighting, all that pain. He prays that it is enough to save hers too.

The training he had done in the war camps to strengthen himself and learn how to fly as well as any seems like nothing now. It seems like a game, a thing for children, of no real significance. What he does now, how he pushes himself now with Morrigan’s precious life cradled tenderly in his battered hands, borders on insanity.

He flies faster than he’s ever flown in his life, letting his wings flare and catch currents and updrafts that not even a master of the skies would have attempted to tame. His body shrieks in agony and protest at what he’s putting it through, the muscles that connect the huge, membranous wings to his back soon feel raw and ragged as the harsh fingers of the wind try to tear them free each time he forces himself into an even faster and stronger current of air.

But Azriel mastered pain a long time ago. He mastered it when he was a child and his brothers came stalking to him in the dark whispering in low, chilling voices of the games they were to play that day. Pain and he were old friends and he knew what to do with it, how to own it, how to shove it down deep within himself to a place where he barely felt it any longer.

All he needed to do when it became too much, when he was sure that he couldn’t go on, that he couldn’t push himself any harder without tumbling from the skies, his wings shattered, was look down at her. She was tucked in close to his chest for safety and warmth, his body shielding hers from the harsh elements. Her slender form was still wrapped tightly in his coat, her beautiful, bloodied face just visible over the collar. For her he could keep going, for her he could push himself past the point of endurance, for her he could defy pain and fear and death itself. For her. _For her_.

At last, after hours or days or weeks he doesn’t know, the Illyrian mountains rise up around him, wrapping him in a comforting embrace. They were some of the first things he saw when they let him out of that pit in the ground where he’d lived out his travesty of a childhood. The first things he had seen when they had told him that he was going away. At first he had felt terror, sure that he would be sent somewhere worse than this because they would never give him anything _good,_ surely. But the mountains had offered him a new home, of the kind he had never known. They were harsh and cruel and unyielding but…But they had let him fly. They had not kept him in a cage. They smell now of freedom. And, he prays, of safety.  

The cabin rises as a small blot on the wild landscape and he sinks towards it gratefully. He’s thankful for the thick snowdrifts that have formed around it as they cushion his landing, his exhausted body crumpling onto the ground with no grace or dignity. His entire body trembles violently, his wings sagging behind him and his vision splits and burns and he shudders, his chest heaving as he tries to force enough air into lungs that feel too small and too tight.

He could have collapsed down onto the frozen ground and never risen again. The snow that was lightly beginning to fall would have blanketed him, burying him and keeping him here. Exhaustion floods through every part of him, draining him, and only the pain that blazes in his wings as though they’ve been shredded to ribbons by his reckless, ceaseless flight, keeps him conscious.

But then Mor stirs in his arms and reminds him why he put himself through that and strength he hadn’t known he possessed floods into him at the feel of it.

Groaning, wings dragging behind him, limp and lifeless, Azriel staggers into the cabin, bearing Mor in his arms. He carries her into the nearest bedroom and sets her down carefully onto the single bed. The sudden absence of her small body against his, pressed there for so long during the flight, hits him like a physical wound, as though someone has torn off an arm or a wing and he stumbles as he fights to regain his balance.

The warmth of the cabin seems to seep into her, doing her some good because she stirs again and her eyes flutter as consciousness returns. She had been asleep in his arms for most of the flight here and, from the injuries that covered her body, he had been glad of that but now…Her eyes find his in the dark, the beautiful, velvet brown muddied with pain and fear. On some deeply buried instinct he doesn’t think he’ll ever understand, Az reaches out and softly strokes her hair back from her face, seeking to soothe and comfort her.

“You’re safe,” he whispers to her, his voice a rough rasp. “You’re safe now.”

He wonders for a moment if he’s ever said those words before, if he’s ever been there for another person and promised them that. He wonders if he ever will again after this moment. He has no illusions about what he is, about the uses he will be put to. He doesn’t know how to calm a person, that wasn’t what he was made for, wasn’t what he was taught. But he tries, tries in this moment to find it because he knows he will never have this chance again.

The very soul of darkness itself speaks to him. He will not be allowed to live among the light. Heroes do not wear scars for skin and drown themselves in blood and screams. He will not be like them. He will be the dagger thrust into the belly of the night, the monster that stalks prey through the shadows that cloak it, the demon that terrorises the enemies of the masters he will no doubt have to serve.

But for this one moment, for this one girl, for this one bright spot in his life, he could be something like a hero in her eyes. He had saved her, after all. He had found her, he had brought her here, brought her somewhere safe. He had been something other than a monster to her. If only for a moment.

A moment he thinks he’ll treasure for the rest of his life. A moment that he will cling to when he confronts the horrors they will make him perform. A moment he can remember, a small piece of his soul that she will protect no matter what he does from here on in. And the look in her eyes, the gratitude, the wonder…That will burn in him like fire and ensure that he is never alone in the darkness again. And for that alone he will love her until eternity claims him.

Stalking back into the main room he looks to the domestic magic of the cabin to provide him what he needs to help her. It obliges. Water, clean rags, bandages and ointments form a neat stack on the counter top in front of him. As he inspects them he sends a quick message to Rhys, brutally short and efficient, telling them that he found Mor and where they are, requesting he send a healer to them immediately. He’s under no illusions. Her life still hangs in the balance and there’s only so much he can do to stave off the darkness that calls to her.

Gathering the supplies in his arms he pads back into the bedroom. Hastily quickening his pace when he finds Mor stirring feebly but frantically, hands opening and closing as they search for something –search for _him._ He hurries to her side, dropping down hard onto his knees at her side in his haste to get to her. Azriel reaches out and takes one of her scrabbling hands in his, giving it a gentle squeeze, stopping her panicked movements. He tries to reassure her that he’s here, that she’s not alone in the dark and the cold any more, cursing himself for not at least warning her before he left her in this state. He should have known how she would react, given what she’d been through.

Kneeling down he lays out his supplies and Mor peers down at them, eyes glazed over with pain. A pulse of fear burns through her at the sight and Az quickly places a hand on her arm, trying to calm her.

He only meant to clean out and patch some of her smaller wounds. Azriel was given some rudimentary training in emergency field medics for use on the battlefield but he knows so little that can truly help her. His hands were made to harm, not to heal. A proper healer will be here soon, he hopes, and he should wait but…By the Mother…She’s losing so much blood from the wound in her abdomen.

Cautiously he reaches out, making to shift aside the blankets but then he stops. Even in this condition it feels wrong to force his help upon her, even if he knows she needs it, not after what she’s been through. “I have to take a look at your injuries,” he tells her, keeping his voice quiet and level, hoping that will provide some small measure of calm to her. “Can I?” Her huge brown eyes find his and she holds his steady, unwavering gaze, searching for something in him. She must find it because a moment later she nods weakly, giving him permission to approach and touch her.

Gently, Az rolls back the blankets then shifts aside the coat he had given to her to keep her warm, the coat she still clings to with every bit of desperate strength she has left. Lifting it reveals her stomach and the ruined mess that’s been made of it. He understands immediately why she had lost so much blood up to this point, and why the wounds haven’t healed themselves.

Buried deep in her body is a long, wicked ash nail that drives away her healing magic and sap her strength. It’s been used, as he sees with a sick burn in his gut, to attach a parchment note to her, bloodied but still legible. Her father’s handwriting, informing Eris with clinical coldness that Mor, his _daughter_ , is his problem now.

Anger floods the pit of Azriel’s stomach like fire in a volcano and he clenches his hands at his sides in an attempt to control himself. Azriel himself was on the receiving end of his family’s cruelty for years as a child and even he struggles to comprehend how a father could do this to his daughter. As soon as Rhys gets here with his healer, Az decides, he’s going to fly for the Court of Nightmares, no matter how hard he has to push himself, no matter if it kills him. And then he’s going to repay Mor’s father in kind for every wound, down to the smallest scratch and scrape

This world may not have taught him how to heal, how to give life, how to soothe a frightened girl when she’s hurting. But it has taught him pain. And for the first time he finds that he’s grateful for those lessons and the potential they offer him. Revenge is the only form of comfort he can provide her with. And it can’t come too soon as far as he’s concerned.

Mor’s violent trembling draws him back to her in the present and forces him to focus on her. Her breathing is shallow and bordering on panicked as her fingers try and seek out what’s caused such a reaction in him, fumbling for her bloodied stomach. Azriel quickly catches them in his hands, squeezing gently and making her stop, making her look at him instead. Somehow, the action seems to calm her.

Slowly, holding her eyes and her hands the entire time, he explains her situation to her. “I have to take this out,” he concludes softly, “It’s preventing your body from healing with magic and you’re losing a lot of blood. Too much. Do you understand?”

She gives him another tiny nod. She seems somehow stronger now, more alert and more awake in a way that he’s seen soldiers look in conflict at the war camps. Battle fever grips them and keeps them on their feet and fighting on through wounds that should have killed them. Something similar seems to be flooding Mor’s body now, keeping her conscious and present with him.

A single tear rolls down her cheek as she stares up at him. She never once breaks his gaze or lets go of his hand, as though she’s afraid something terrible will happen if she does.

“I’m scared, Az,” she whispers to him, her voice a tiny, hopeless rasp.

His heart clenches painfully at the sound, at the sight of her like this. When she had first strutted into that war camp at Rhys’ side she had looked like a queen and had walked as though the very bones of the earth beneath her feet belonged to her and obeyed her every command. Now that she’s here, wrapped in a jacket that’s far too large for her, drowning her small body, her eyes wide and sunken in her ashen face he realises how young she is, barely more than a child.

“I know,” he whispers, stroking his thumb over the back of her hand. “I know. But it will be all right.”

He doesn’t know where those last words come from, how he manages to whisper them to her with such conviction. It might not be all right, _she_ might not be all right if the healer doesn’t get here in time. But the words help her in spite of that. She looks at him and lifts her chin slightly and he sees a flicker of the queen who feared no-one and nothing walking into that camp in her eyes as strength flows through her from him.

“Do it,” she breathes, still holding his eyes but releasing his hands to enable to him to follow her command.

Her voice trembles, still laced with terror but it’s also louder and stronger than before as well, infused with a courage he knows few can muster. A surge of awe and respect floods through him at it. After all she’s been through, all she’s suffered- there’s a part of her that still has hope and strength and bravery. A part of her that tells him that she’s not broken. Not yet.

Refusing to allow her to linger in anticipation, letting the fear of the pain that’s about to engulf her rise and swallow her and perhaps truly shatter her, Azriel acts upon her order without thinking. Swift and smoothly as he can he reaches down and pulls the nail free from her in a single, fluid motion. Blood wells and his hand burns at the contact with the tainted wood and she _screams_. She screams in agony, her hands fisting in the sheets beneath her as her entire body arches, agony bursting along her spine, before she collapses again, trembling uncontrollably. The sound rips straight through him, as though she’s plunged her hand into his ribcage, shattering bone and tearing muscle, and wrenched out his heart with the sound.

“I’m sorry,” Azriel chokes out, shaking his head and yanking up a thick wad of material helpfully spawned at his side by the cabin’s magic. “I’m sorry,” he says again as he presses it onto her abdomen to try and staunch the bleeding as her screams of agony dissolve into shuddering, hoarse sobs, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

She pants hopelessly for breath, her eyes closed, tears still leaking out from beneath her lids. Her lips hang open, making way for her faint, dry, wracking sobs. “It’s over,” Az whispers to her, one hand stroking through her sweat damp hair as he shuffles closer on his knees. The other keeps a firm pressure on the wound until her body can gather the strength it needs to begin closing it.

“It’s over, it’s done, I promise. It’s over now. You’ll be all right, it will all be all right. I promise, I _promise_.”  Her breathing is shallow and ragged but she manages to nod to him though she keeps her eyes pressed tightly together. Her hand finds his arm and she grips on tightly, anchoring herself to him as she tries to regain control of herself.

Gingerly, Az peels back the cloth he had pressed against her stomach and manages to see beneath the fresh blood staining her creamy skin that he had been right. Now the nail has been prised free the wound has begun to slowly close. He sags in relief against the edge of the bed, permitting himself a moment to close his eyes and breathe deeply, composing himself.

When he opens his eyes again he forces himself to be calm and cool and deliberate as he assesses her. Carefully, seeking her permission with each task he undertakes, Az begins to tend to and patch her other wounds as best he can.

He cleans the blood from her stomach, allowing the last of the healing to take place on the grisly wound. However powerful her magic and however skilled the healer he summoned he knows that it will scar, that she will have a permanent reminder of the violence of her family etched into her skin for the rest of her life. Even as he does.

Passing over that he moves on to her other injuries, cuts and bruises that he rubs ointment and cream into before bandaging, and in some cases stitching them. He knows that the healer will be able to do a better job and, as he continues on to increasingly minor injuries, he knows he should halt his clumsy attempts at care and wait for them to attend her properly. But he can’t stop. A part of him needs to keep touching her, needs to keep doing something, needs to keep trying to help her. He doesn’t want to leave her side and he doesn’t want to sit here uselessly waiting for another to come. He has to try.

Mor doesn’t seem to want him to stop or go either. She remains still and quiet while he works on her but he thinks he senses some mild improvements in her. Her ragged breathing has become a little steadier since he removed the nail and allowed her to heal. And somehow his continued presence seems to provide some sort of reassurance as a little of the tension leaks from her locked muscles.

After a little while the cabin provides him with some rudimentary painkillers she should now be able to stand which he inspects with relief. It also provides her with a thin night gown to cover her and make her more comfortable. Az grinds up the herbs and mixes them with a little water then gently holds her head and helps her swallow it down, promising it will help. She doesn’t even look at what he’s giving her, just blindly trusts him and obeys his quiet instructions. Once they’ve taken enough effect Az helps her stand and step into the nightgown which he then laces up at the back before lowering her gently back down onto the bed.

Taking his time he fusses over the now bloodied and dirtied supplies that have become scattered in a wide, disordered semi-circle around him, rearranging them and tidying them, prolonging his stay in the room. But exhaustion is slowly beginning to sweep over her, especially with the painkillers starting to work and eventually he clears his throat and stands, arms laden.

“Rhys will be here soon,” he tells her quietly, hoping the mention of her cousin will help. “He’ll be able to take care of you.” Better than he ever could, the broken bastard who doesn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘care’ let alone how to properly provide it.

Nodding he turns to leave the room but stops when he feels Mor’s small, warm hand catch on his arm, feeble but insistent. He looks back at her at once, not wanting to strain her and he finds her looking up at him, her big brown eyes a little clearer than before and shining with some deep emotion that he can’t place.

“You came for me,” she says, her voice ragged and raw from all her screaming. Az pauses, frozen in place, not having expected this and not knowing at all how to respond. But Mor continues, swallowing tightly and going on, “You found me. You, you helped me. Why?”

He blinks at her, startled and confused by the question. Cautiously, to give himself time to find something to say, and without really thinking about it, he moves back to her.  He perches awkwardly on the edge of the bed beside her, taking care to maintain as much distance as possible between them.

He doesn’t understand why she’s asking him this. Looking for her, finding her, helping her, they hadn’t even registered as questions in his mind. It had been more like acting on an instinct, obeying commands that by-passed his mind and his reason and consideration entirely. Trying to find her before it was too late had felt like breathing to him, like keeping his heart beating in his chest. He hadn’t thought, he had only done, had only acted. His entire being had driven him to find her, something deep within him pushing him on. He would have done anything for her, anything to find her, anything to save her life tonight. He would have destroyed heaven or opened up the gates of hell, would have shattered himself along every fragile crack and fissure in his soul just for the chance of it. It wasn’t something he’d had a choice in.

Mor seems to sense his bemusement because she wrinkles her brow slightly and tries to explain further. “You barely even know me, Azriel,” she murmurs faintly.

He realises with a start that she’s right. Two weeks ago he hadn’t known her at all, hadn’t even been aware that she existed beyond vague, faceless mentions and allusions Rhys had made of her on a few brief occasions. He feels such rightness with her, as though he was made to exist by her side, shaped for the express purpose of sinking in to her shadow and making his home there. The idea of her not being part of his life seems almost unbearable to him, to the thing inside him that beats like a second heart whenever he thinks of her name.

“But you still did this for me,” she says, a mix of awe and uncertainty in her words, “You risked your life to save mine. Why?”

That question again, the one he has at once too many answers to and not enough. How could he explain it to her? How could he put into words that thing he barely even knows he feels and can’t even begin to understand within him that tugged him to her, that roared at him not to let her die? It was like an instinct, but stronger and deeper, so much more so. And it had refused to let him sit by and allow her light to wink out of this world without a fight.

Finally, he opens his mouth and lets whatever truth is bubbling closest to the surface spill out without thinking. “Because I wish someone had done that for me.”

He blurts it out to her and feels a cold sense of something like panic seize his chest at the admission. Never has he been as candid as that about his own past, his own weakness. But for her…He can tell her. She’s safe, somehow. And he knows…Knows as he looks into this liquid velvet dark eyes of hers…That if she could have done, if she had known of him then, she would have gone to the same lengths he went to tonight to save him.

Pushing himself away from her bed as though burned by his truth he says hastily, ducking his head and not looking her in the eye as he speaks, “You should try and get some rest now,” he tells her.

Her mouth is open, as though she wants to question him further, but then she seems to think better of it. Relief sweeps him and he nods his head and makes to leave again but she grips his hand in hers and he looks back to find fear coating her eyes again.

Taking a deep breath he growls firmly, “I won’t leave you, Morrigan.” She relaxes visibly and he’s glad he managed to read her fear correctly.  In a slightly calmer tone he adds, “I’ll check on you in a little while, I’m going to wait for Rhys but I’ll be close. I won’t leave.” He repeats the final phrase again and waits until she nods her permission before he slips out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Just before it clicks shut he hears her whisper a faint, “Thank you, Azriel.”


	3. Part 3: Concerto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azriel and Mor are safely ensconced in the cabin in the mountains, healing slowly from their ordeal. Rhys arrives in response to Azriel’s summons, bringing a healer with them. He and Azriel have a moment while the healer tends to Mor. Rhys’ POV.

Rhys pushes into the cabin. The healer he has brought scampers obediently along in his wake. The moment he had received Azriel’s message he had summoned the best one available at the hour, and, without explanation or due warning, had grabbed the woman’s arm almost the moment she had entered the room and winnowed her here with him. Fortunately she had seemed to grasp the seriousness of the situation and that, coupled with the fact she was dealing with the High Lord’s heir, had kept her relatively quiet and composed.

One look at Azriel sends the healer hurrying hastily into the room to check on Mor, leaving him alone with his brother. Rhys forces himself to remain in the sitting area, giving the woman space to work, not wanting to crowd or overwhelm her. Instead he focuses on his brother. Azriel paces the cabin floor like a caged animal, half feral and wild. In all their years together, through all their trials in the war camps, all the things Azriel was asked to do and forced to see, he’s never seen him like this before.

He’s agitated and tense, his movements utterly unlike the usual smooth, catlike grace he tends to associate with the shadowsinger. They’re jerky and rigid, like a spider, which for Azriel is a shocking betrayal of his own inner turmoil. Rhys realises with a faint thrill of shock that Azriel looks out of control, something he’s never seen from him before, something he didn’t fully believe he was capable of.

His brother had quickly gained a reputation in the camps, even from a young age, of being utterly cool and composed whatever was asked of them. Nothing caused that cold mask to crack, nothing had pushed him into showing so much as a flicker of excess emotion. Everything was rigidly controlled, always.

It had led to many of the others shunning him and murmuring anxiously about his shadows and the things that they sang to him. The rumours had flown that he could both commune with the dead and peer into the future had been the source of much of the talk around the campfires. There had also been whispers that he had given up his soul and allowed the shadows to possess him in order to give him such power.

Rhys knows those stories are untrue, yet the reputation Az had earned was not unwarranted. The Illyrians had had good reason to treat him with the near fearful reverence they did. Shadowsingers were powerful and coveted and Azriel…Azriel had a way of implying he knew the secrets of everyone around him, and would do even without the shadows whispering to him. He had an air of utmost control surrounding him that began to border on unconcern. Who would dare think to harm an assassin when the very darkness itself spoke to him?

Finally, Az stops his pacing long enough to fix Rhys with a piercing stare and ask for updates about the Night Court and how they’ve reacted to Mor’s situation. Rhys rolls his shoulders and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to ease some of the knots that have tightened in his back. Then he sighs. The court is tense, the little of it his father has allowed him to see. Knowing that, in all likelihood, Rhys would have misted Keir on the spot the moment he saw him after what he’d done to his daughter, his father had taken great pains to keep him away from what was happening.

Rhys doubted he would be punished. His father had some small fondness for Mor but he was traditional. Mor belonged to her father and her father’s word was law. Mor had broken that word and her father had therefore been right in that sense to punish her in whatever way he deemed fit. Despite the fact it made anger twist in his gut until he wanted to stalk through the Court of Nightmares and bring new meaning to that name with a word and his will he knows he’s in no position to do so. Yet.

Azriel’s expression darkens with every word Rhys speaks until the shadows were swirling across the planes of his face like the living soul of hell, deepening the hollows of his cheeks and eyes until he seemed almost spectral and otherworldly and Rhys was forced to suppress a shiver. As he finished Azriel gave his wings a sharp shake, snapping them out and readying himself before stalking past Rhys towards the door without a word.

Knowing him well enough to recognise the utter exhaustion in his brother, no matter how well he hides it, Rhys grabs his arm. Azriel is a peerless warrior; cold, precise and utterly deadly in battle. But he’s also tired, drained and, oddly enough for Azriel, far too emotionally invested in this fight. The evidence for that is clear in his willingness to fly another hundred or so miles and seek a conflict with an entire court alone. With his shadows and abilities Rhys wouldn’t bet against him at any other point but not tonight.

“Stop,” Rhys says quietly, his voice level and steady.

 Not an order from an Heir to an underling but a quiet plea from one friend to another. He waits until Azriel’s cold hazel gaze slices up to meet his own, before he lets his grip slacken slightly, though he doesn’t dare fully release him, not yet.

He sighs heavily, “What do you hope to achieve, Az?” he asks wearily. It’s been a long night, how Azriel can still be standing is beyond him.

“You know,” he says softly. And Rhys does. He fails to suppress the shudder that trickles down his spine like a drop of frozen water dragging its nails down his nerves at that.

There’s murder in his friend’s hazel eyes, a dark and unholy thing that he’s never seen there before.

Azriel rarely displays large bursts of open emotion. In that regard he’s the direct opposite of Cassian, who wears his heart proudly on his sleeve and struggles truly hiding anything. In Azriel Rhys has had to work to find the warmth and softness that comes from the camaraderie he shares with them. Az is devoted and loves and hates and cares just as fiercely as Cass, but it’s usually muted and difficult to find, even by those who know him well.

The fury that now stirs in those hazel eyes is not hard to pick out. It burns in him. But not like fire, no, this burn stings of howling ice winds and frigid blizzards whipped into a frenzy. Rhys knows that Az is balanced on the razor knife’s edge, honed to a perilously sharp edge. One whisper of breath is all it will take to send him over that edge. And that will end in the slaughter of both the Autumn Court and Keir’s nightmare ensemble. For revenge. For Morrigan.

“You can’t do this, Az,” Rhys says quietly, still not removing his hand from Azriel’s shoulder.

Az hisses, his face contorting into something harsh. For the first time Rhys feels a thrill of dark fear at the things his brother might be capable of and is reminded of the black demons that dwell in his past.

“Don’t try and make this about politics or games, Rhys,” he growls, his voice low and rough, raw and edged with barely contained anger. “This isn’t about them. This is about _her_ , about what they did to her.”

“My restraint has nothing to do with politics,” Rhys growls, temper worn thin by exhaustion and worry for Mor. Closing his eyes he takes a deep, calming breath and looks his brother steadily in the eyes once more. Fighting to keep his voice level he says softly, “I understand why you want to do this, Az, Cauldron I do but-“

“Go and look at her, Rhys,” Azriel snaps, the tight leash he usually keeps himself on fraying and coming close to breaking as he actually interrupts him, startling him into silence. “Go in there and look at what they did to her before they dumped her on a monster and let him leave her to die like she was an _animal_ , like she was _nothing.”_

Rhys feels a faint stab of pity and understanding flood him as he looks into Azriel’s eyes. Of course a family brutalising a child because they couldn’t see her worth, hurting her, treating her as little more than a problem to be solved, would get under Azriel’s skin like nothing else could.

That and the fact that it had been Morrigan…Morrigan who had found soft, shy smiles just for Az when he had never known her to be shy about anything in her life. Azriel who’s shadows lightened every time he saw one of those smiles when he never allowed his guard to drop for any other. Azriel who was shattered when he found that she had slept with his brother. Azriel who had found a deeper chasm of vengeance and cold rage within himself when they had punished her for seizing her freedom. Azriel who looked at Mor like she was a star fallen to earth and given flesh, gilded in sunlight and warmth. Azriel who had loved her from the moment their eyes had met.

The sudden flash of hot anger and emotion that Azriel had just displayed fades back, withdrawn once more into his shell as his eyes go hard and blank. It’s as though he’s read Rhys’ thoughts and realised that he had uncovered his secret, his empathy with Mor, he personal connection that carves every wound upon her body into his own skin. Having noticed Rhys’ insight he is now determined to smother it before it becomes a weapon to be used against him.  

His voice is perfectly cold and flat and somehow more chilling and threatening when he says with simple, precise viciousness, “They deserve it.” This revenge has been calculated, Rhys realises. Whatever Azriel has decided to do to Mor’s father in retribution for her injuries has already been planned down to the second, each cut meticulously thought out.

Rhys has never seen this side to Az before, this depthless, frozen rage that he knows is longing to tear free of Azriel’s battered skin and cleave this world in two for what it did to her. He knows then, as he looks into Azriel’s eyes and finds the rich vein of emotion in them he hadn’t known he possessed, what he feels for Mor. That she managed to pull such feeling from him, to the point that he could lose his considerable self-control…He wonders if either of them realise just how deep the bond between them runs.

“I agree,” Rhys says quietly. Even without seeing Mor, without seeing what they’ve done to her, he would tear apart both of the festering courts without losing a wink of sleep over it. “And if that is what she wants I will help you destroy them so completely that the world won’t remember they ever existed make no mistake,” he says, his voice edged with sharpness despite its velvet smoothness. “But it’s not our choice to make. It’s hers.”

For the first time since he arrived Azriel lets his muscles relax and settles. He studies Rhys for a long moment and the usual cool mask fits itself over his features once more as he considers. Calm stillness radiates from him as though it’s just that easy to master himself, to temper that rage. He glances towards the bedroom, where the healer still works on Mor, then looks back at Rhys and nods once. Rhys knows that was the only argument, the one that appealed to her choice, her right to choose, the thing that had been stripped so forcibly from her, that would ever have stayed Az’s blade.

But though he’s agree to remain in place and let the courts and their monsters be for the moment, shadows still gather to him like storm clouds blackening a clear white sky.

Rhys is glad to have reason to glance away from him as the healer emerges from Mor’s room, cleaning hands dyed red with blood on a damp cloth. Both of them surge towards her so suddenly that Rhys is impressed when she doesn’t flinch back from them. Instead she plants herself firmly in the middle of the room, looks deliberately from one to the other and then says, “She’s in a bad way, still.”

Rhys feels himself go almost painfully still as his power swells and roils within him, threatening to break the restraints he keeps clamped so tightly about it. Azriel found her, brought her here alive, they had gotten a healer to her, the best in Velaris, if she still died after that…

Beside him Azriel had gone as still as death in the beat that it takes for the healer to say tiredly, “But she will live.”

Relief courses through Rhys and he closes his eyes, slumping in place, feeling Azriel do the same at his side.  The healer continues, “I gave her something for the pain and to help her sleep. She needs time to rest and recover from her ordeal.”

“But she _will_ recover?” Rhys clarifies, hands balled into fists but stuffed into the pockets of his tunic to hide the tell he’s never quite been able to master from view.

The healer nods, “Yes, Lord Heir, she will recover in time. Physically at least.” Rhys flinches slightly at that. The healer’s eyes darken slightly as she adds softly, “I fear there will be greater scars left on her than the ones upon her body, however.” Rhys glances briefly towards Azriel who bows his head in silent acknowledgement of the healer’s words. His own scarred hands had clenched tightly into fists at his sides. Rhys knows that they, like the marks that will pepper Mor’s body, are nothing to the damage that was done to his mind and soul because of what he was put through.  

Rhys asks the healer to wait outside for a moment, promising to return her to the court soon and thanking her for her service. He steps briefly into Mor’s room and has to swallow his disgust and his rage at the state he finds her in. He realises that he can’t blame Azriel for his bloodlust and his desire to shred both courts to pieces as he shares it looking down at her, at the mess they made.

Stroking back her hair he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead and whispers the soft wish for her to heal swiftly before he returns to Azriel.

“You’re leaving?” he asks, voice level and even once more, control returned.

Rhys nods tiredly, “There’s a lot to do,” he says, groaning inwardly at the very thought of the mess that’s been created by this. “I have to see my father,” he isn’t as adept at internalising this grimace. But he softens as he adds, more quietly and warmly, “And I have to find Cassian and tell him that she’ll be all right.”

Azriel’s expression softens as well at the mention of their brother and his worry. He had urged Rhys to go when they had received Azriel’s message but had been unable to face her himself yet. Rhys had not pushed him, not yet.  

“Would you stay with her?” Rhys asks quietly. He’s aware that the chances of Azriel voluntarily leaving Mor alone here when she’s in this condition are slimmer than him willingly transferring control of his court to Keir when he comes into his power but he knows Az will feel more comfortable if he asks him to remain in his stead, probably feeling that he shouldn’t be the one to stay with her at all.  

Something like discomfort passes briefly over Azriel’s face, and Rhys reads it to mean that he’d correctly interpreted his brother’s assumption that he would be better suited to stay and care for Mor now. But he glances up at her room, the door slightly ajar, and then turns back to him before he comes to his decision and nods once in silent affirmation.

Rhys wonders, as he claps Azriel on the shoulder, if Mor is aware of the effect that she has on him. He knows that his cousin is well aware of her beauty and her charm but Azriel gives so little away and can be so difficult to read…He then wonders if Az is aware of the effect that _he_ has on _her_ in turn. Almost certainly not. For all the secrets his shadows whisper to him somehow they haven’t managed to penetrate the deepest mysteries of females and Az remains almost painfully distant and oblivious of the attentions piled upon him.

But he had had an effect on her. Before bringing her to the camp to meet Azriel, Rhys had never known her to glance quietly at anyone. Mor didn’t glance at those around her, she boldly fixed them with that shining stare and dared them to look away. But Az…Az had been different. And him she had gifted not her brazen grin that always looked so near to splitting at the seams and erupting into laughter, but a soft, warm smile. He had sworn Azriel’s shadows had fled, even for just the briefest of moments, when she had looked at him that way.

Without any real conviction in the words, he suggests that Az rests. He looks drained and exhausted and Rhys can only imagine what he put himself through and how hard he must have pushed himself in order to get Mor here on time. But Az only growls faintly at the suggestion then sinks down pointedly in a chair just outside her bedroom door, patently going nowhere.

Rhys just offers him a thin lipped smile as the shadowsinger’s gaze and attention slides from him and moves onto the bedroom where Mor rests. Clapping his brother gently on the shoulder Rhys nods to him before striding from the cabin to find the healer and winnowing them both home. He feels no unease about leaving Mor alone with Az. The cabin itself is safe and near impossible to find but even if it weren’t he would leave with complete peace of mind. If an army marched on them here and attempted to do more harm to her he would place all of his money on his brother slaughtering every last one of them, her name a war cry on his lips.

****


	4. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys leaves Azriel and Mor alone, returning to the Night Court. Both of them find themselves torn from sleep by ragged nightmares as their pasts return to haunt them. Together, they work through some of the horrors in their past and find themselves drawn closer together as a result.

Dedication Part 4: Coda 

Familiar silence once again folds Azriel into its waiting arms. The cabin around him is quiet. Rhys left a few hours before, taking the healer with him; Mor, thankfully, still sleeps soundly in the other room. No-one has intruded upon their peace since Rhys left. Azriel hasn’t budged from the chair he obstinately settled himself in after his talk with Rhys. He had promised her that he would stay close; that he wouldn’t leave her, and he has no intention of breaking that promise.

The domestic magic of the cabin urges him to look after himself, offering food and drink in abundance and providing pillows and blankets. He ignores it all. But even his iron cast will isn’t enough to stop him from dozing. Using his power to jump between the Night Court and Autumn, his frantic, terrified searching in the snow and then the hundreds of miles he flew at breakneck speed to get Mor to safety all without pausing or resting have taken their toll on him. His eyes are heavy and, in spite of himself, he eventually sinks into sleep, reluctant but irresistible, like drowning in thick quicksand.

His dreams are twisted and dark. The faces of his brothers, horribly contorted, spring up all around him, pressing in, getting closer and closer and closer all the time, the way the walls in his cell had done when he had been a child. Blackness, deep and complete, obscures his vision as they swarm over him, blotting out the world once more.

 Flame blazes, a horrifying light in the darkness that he wishes to extinguish. His relief that his brothers do not once more turn that wild, roaring hunger upon him again is short-lived. A moment later he notices Morrigan curled, helpless, on the floor of his cell. Her body is covered in blood and bruises as it had been when he had found her only hours before in the Autumn Court. His brothers are advancing on her. Azriel cries out in panicked desperation, fighting to get to her, but his wings are pinned once more, staked to the wall behind him and he is as helpless as he was all those years ago. His brothers reach her, pulling her up from the floor and bearing down upon her with the sick smiles he came to know so well. Her eyes go wide and she stares at him, pleading, terrified, as their hands leave more marks upon her delicate skin, they douse her in the same oil that had once covered his hands, the scent making him convulse and strain, trashing to get to her, to stop them but then they-

Her scream pierces his soul and tears him from the nightmare.

 Azriel jerks awake, covered in sweat and panting. The echo of that cry is piercing and so full of terror it cuts straight through his ribs, jarring his bones, and strikes directly at his heart. It takes him several pounding heartbeats to realise that it does not exist only in his dreams.

 Azriel is on his feet in seconds, diving for the door of Mor’s bedroom. The cabin was impossible to find, impossible to enter, how could they have gotten to her? How could he have let them?

Drawing the sword in a single fluid motion from where it’s sheathed at his spine Azriel bursts through the door to her room, sinking into a stance ready to attack in order to defend on instinct. He quickly realises however that the room is empty but for the two of them.

Sheathing his sword Az berates himself for not having seen this coming. Of course she would have nightmares following what she’d been through. Shaking off the memories of his own he crosses the room to her, swift and silent and kneels down beside her.

She’s thrashing so wildly on the bed, clearly petrified, that she’s tangled herself badly in the sheets which have wrapped around her body and pinned her like twisting ropes. This restraint only terrifies her further, no doubt reminding her of her ordeal and she fights even harder to escape, her eyes wide and horrified as they had been in his dreams.

Afraid that she’s going to hurt herself Azriel catches her wrists gently but firmly in his hands, stopping her struggling so wildly, making her notice his presence. “Morrigan, _Morrigan,_ ” she looks at him without really seeing him. “It’s not real,” he whispers softly, knowing that those words are thin and empty as what she witnessed in that dream _had_ been real. But not now, not anymore, he found her, brought her here, saved her. “I’m here,” he breathes quietly, wondering if that can possibly calm her, “I’m here with you, Morrigan. I’m here, it’s all right now.”

He murmurs softly to her, repeating her name and soft, vague comforts until her great, brown eyes manage to focus on him. The moment he sees her take him in and understand her situation he releases her wrists, severing the contact between them. Shifting in a little closer Az works to quickly and deftly untangle her. The entire time he works on her she sits unnaturally still save for her uncontrollable, violent trembling.

 As soon as he frees her, dropping the blankets to the floor to reinforce that, her whole body becomes boneless and she folds in on herself, sobbing, knees drawn up to her chest, slender body shaking with the force of her convulsions.

Wincing at her distress Azriel perches awkwardly on the edge of her bed, not sure what to do. Tentatively he reaches out and places a soft, scarred hand on her back. She doesn’t flinch away from the contact and so he begins to rub in big, broad, soothing motions, trying to calm her down.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs, keeping his voice low and steady. “You’re alright. You’re safe now. They can’t find you here. They can’t touch you again. You’re safe, you’re _free_ , you’re free, I promise.”

Slowly, Mor begins to shuffle forwards on the bed towards him. Az remains frozen in place and doesn’t back away when she burrows in against his chest, still crying and still clearly petrified. Gently, following instincts he never knew he possessed, he rocks her carefully back and forth, rubbing her back and allowing her to grip tightly onto his forearms, anchoring herself to him.

It takes a long time her to begin to calm down, so much so that he wonders if he should send for Rhys or the healer again, thinking they could likely do more for her than him. But as though somehow sensing this fleeting impulse she presses in still more closely to him, the trembling in her body now shuddering through him too and her grip tightens, nails digging in to his leathers.

Without raising her head from where it’s pillowed against his chest she whispers, words hoarse and strained, “Hold me.” He stills against her, every muscle locking up and going taut at her words. But then she adds a tiny, broken, “Please,” and he breaks.

Shifting them into a more comfortable position on the bed he lies back and then slowly wraps his arms around her, drawing her in close. She clings to him tightly, still trembling, but a little less so now which he takes as a good sign. Azriel forces himself to try and relax in spite of their proximity, hoping it will encourage her to do likewise. But the tension remains in her locked muscles and her faint but still noticeable shaking.

When she speaks again her words startle him slightly, “Is Cassian okay?” she rasps, her voice hoarse and raw from her screams. As she asks she looks up at him with large eyes that, in spite of everything she’s been put through over the past few days, still somehow contain a guileless kind of innocence. It breaks his heart.

“Cassian?” he asks blankly. First he wonders why she would ask about him in light of what happened to her but then a stab of fear lances his heart and he wonders if perhaps she heard some threat or somehow knows of something that has befallen his brother in his absence-

Mor’s small voice interrupts his irrational fears. “I thought, I thought you might have hurt him too. In punishment,” she says the last few words with a pronounced shudder and Az instinctively gives her a gently squeeze to calm her.

“Cassian is fine,” he rumbles quietly to her, hoping that this will reassure her.

She nods gratefully then bites her lip as she peers owlishly up at him again and then, “Rhys was here?”

She must have picked up the faint scent of her cousin that still lingers in the quiet cabin. Azriel nods, confirming her suspicions, remembering his concern for her. “He brought the healer to tend to you,” he explains evenly. “He was only able to stay a little while, he had to get back to the court-“ she flinches almost imperceptibly at the mention of that place of nightmares and he scolds himself vehemently for mentioning it to her.

Casting around for something, anything, else to say to distract her, he’s saved the necessity of doing so when Mor asks him another question. “How did you find me?”

He blinks, startled by the question, not at all sure how to answer her. “I don’t know,” he blurts without thinking about it. Pausing and frowning he considers. His shadows had failed him but still, still he had managed to find her in the dense, sprawling forest. The Autumn Court was enormous and almost impossible to navigate for anyone not born there. Yet he had found her. Finally, feeling the burning press of her eyes upon him he shrugs, wings shuffling behind him and mumbles inadequately, “Instinct.”

They lapse into a quiet silence following this, Mor seeming to understand his inability to put what everything into words. Looking down at her as she nestles in a little closer to him, Azriel can see the familiar shadows that haunt her beautiful brown eyes. They hadn’t been there only a few weeks ago but now they dart and pulse beneath the surface of her, pitching and writhing like the ocean in storm. He finds a deep chasm in his soul aching with understanding for her situation.

Instinctively, he knows that she needs to talk about what’s happened to her, needs to get it out of her system like a poison. But he can also sense her reluctance, her desire never to let it out, to bury it down deep and the conflict that creates. He also knows that she will never talk to Rhys or Cassian about most of these things. Rhys is too close, too liable to blame himself and become upset and Cassian...Cassian is already drowning in guilt and they both know it.

Shifting his position on the bed, his wings beginning to cramp, he tightens his hands slightly, keeping her steady as he moves them. Her eyes dart down to his scarred hands briefly, as they’ve been doing all night. Settling, Azriel draws in a breath then finds himself speaking, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop them, “I was eight.”

She stares up at him with those deep, velvet eyes and somehow he keeps speaking, dredging up these ghosts and releasing them. On some deeply buried instinct he knows, somehow, that this will help her; that it might help them both.

 Clenching and unclenching his hands, her eyes fixed on them in a mixture of horror and morbid curiosity he explains quietly, “They were older, and trueborn, and never punished for the things that they did to me so...” he trails off, rustling his wings uncomfortably, tucking them tighter against his body as though to protect them. The memory of having them pinned and chained still haunts him.

Drawing in a deep breath that shudders through them both he continues, voice low and flat, “They said that it was a game,” he breathes, remembering. He thought he’d forgotten that detail. His eyes darken as he adds, “Mixing fire and oil in the way that they did wasn’t at all fun.”

Mor stiffens against him and he wonders if he went too far in telling her this, wondering if it might backfire on him. But she only whispers, throat tight, “I’m so sorry,” before she gives him a gentle squeeze.

He shrugs, jostling her slightly, and says, a dark glint edging his words, “Rhys and Cassian made sure they paid for it, years later.”

 The memory of that day, their screams echoing when they met his brothers, his _true_ brothers, has soothed his nightmares of them for some time now. They no longer have any control over him, are no longer in the position to torture him the way they once did, and he relishes in having them know that, having them live with it every day, having them feel that same kind of fear he felt wondering when Cassian or Rhys might come to check up on them and remind them what their breed of cruelty feels like.

She tenses again at that mention and he’s about to open his mouth to soften the lethal, razor edge to his words. But then she lifts her chin and says, with a surprising amount of brutal force buried in the growl, “Good.” And he knows that they understand each other on more than the darkness that they have endured; he knows that there is a darkness buried deep within their souls that they share. A shiver snakes along his spine at the thought, at the realisation, at the way it burns inside him.

“I could make the people who hurt you sorry, too,” he whispers to her. A deadly promise that he’d happily fulfil, right this second if that was what she asked of him and damn the consequences. “If that’s what you want.” He feels her shudder violently in his arms, turning until her face is buried against his chest again and he berates himself. “I’m sorry,” he gets out, “I’m sorry, you don’t want to think about that, I shouldn’t have-

“No,” she interrupts, her word hoarse and faint, as though she can’t quite get enough air into her lungs to say them properly. “Thank you,” she murmurs sincerely. “I...They deserve to be punished for what they did,” she breathes quietly and he can’t help the soft growl of approval that rumbles through his chest. “But I, I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to leave me,” she admits, the words tumbling out of her in a rush as she clings tightly to him again to emphasise her point. Her breathing is shallow and ragged as she tries to explain further, “And I...Right now I, I need to talk about it, Azriel. I need to get it out of me, I, I-“

“You can tell me anything you need to, Mor,” he says softly, cutting across her increasingly hysterical rambling, hoping to put her at ease.  Then he adds, “Or I could find Rhys-“

“No,” she says, her voice snapping with sudden fierceness. “No,” she says again, more calmly as she slumps against him, dragging her hands through her hair. Her voice is thick and choked when she admits hopelessly, “I just...I just don’t know, don’t know how to say it,” she whispers numbly. Then she seems to rally slightly, taking a deep, ragged breath she looks up at him, hands still clinging tightly to his leathers, for safety, for support he doesn’t know, “But you...You understand, don’t you?” She breathes to him, her eyes huge as they fix on his, beseeching him.

Azriel nods. Slowly, thickly, like dragging his former self through thick mud in order to pull the frightened child he had been into the present, he tells her about his family. He tells her about his father’s distance and indifference, too intent on keeping his wife and true sons happy to halt to cruelty being done to his youngest child. He tells her about his step-mother, about the way that she had looked at him, like he was an animal, less than that, like he was a problem to be solved and that offering him a clean death was more than he was worth. He tells her about the way she kept him shut in the dark, confined cell, his wings pinned, growing weaker and weaker. He tells her about how his instincts were numbed until he began to wonder if his wings weren’t truly his; that they had just been attached to his body as a cruel joke, to torment him and reinforce the idea of how much freedom he lacked. He tells her about how his brothers tortured and brutalised him for their own amusement. He tells her how, in the beginning, he had hoped if he went along with them and was meek and smiled and took part in their ‘games’ they would some day come to like and maybe even accept him.

He tells her about the day the shadows started whispering to him.

He tells her about his family’s terror at the discovery that he was a shadowsinger. He tells her about the day they came for him and pulled him from his cell and dragged him outside. He tells her how afraid he was, and how he became even more scared when they told him they were taking him to one of the war camps. He tells her how he was sure it would be even more terrible than what he had come from. He tells her how he couldn’t understand Rhys’ mother taking him in or the kindness she showed him, how he flinched at every loud noise in the house for weeks. He tells her how the world seemed so huge outside that cell and how he had never seen so much before.

He tells her that his hands still burn with phantom pains sometimes, even now. He tells her that he still has nightmares about the things that his brothers used to do to him. He still has nightmares about that cell, the darkness, the walls closing in. He has nightmares where the shadows never come to whisper to him and he never escapes that darkness. He tells her that he still has hard days sometimes. He tells them he doesn’t let them win any more. And that she shouldn’t either.

Mor listens to his flat, quiet tales in near silence. Her grip on him tightens a few times as she presses in closer, for comfort or protection from his demons he isn’t sure. After he’s finished she’s quiet for a long time, her slight form trembling beside him. Then, cautiously, she opens up to him and, haltingly, begins to tell him her own story.

“Rhys was so angry when he found out about Cass and me,” she whispers hoarsely. Swallowing hard she tries to gather herself. Reaching out, she grabs one of his scarred hands suddenly in her own and squeezes it, holding it close to her. She seems to draw some measure of strength from him because she goes on shakily, “At the time I, I didn’t understand. I didn’t know why he was so furious with Cass, why he fought him so hard, it seemed like such an overreaction...” she trails off then shakes her head, huddling in against his flying leathers. She presses her next words into the rough fabric, “I understand now.”

Tears slowly spill from her eyes and roll down her beautiful cheeks. Azriel fights the urge to wipe them away, keeping still and quiet instead, letting her speak. “I was their daughter,” she whispers, her hands clenching into fists at her side. “But I meant more to them as, as breeding stock.” She closes her eyes and fresh, silent tears are coaxed from her as a result. This time Az can’t restrain himself and reaches up and swipes them away softly with the tip of his thumb.

She sniffs then chokes out, “I knew how delighted they were at being able to auction me off to whoever they wanted because of my power. I knew they would happily sell me to a sadist for an alliance. I knew they would disregard my choices and agency but...Even when they came for me, that day, I hadn’t really understood. I didn’t really know what they were capable of. I found out the hard way...”

She starts shaking violently and, instinctively, Az returns to slowly rubbing her back as that had seemed to work the best earlier. Irritably shoving down her grief and her pain, Mor forces herself on, a self-depreciating, near hysterical note of false humour in her tone now, “They took me down into the bowels of the Court of Nightmares. They tied me down and suppressed my magic, made it turn inward, made it turn against me, while they, while they-“

Azriel gives her a soft squeeze as she trails off, unable to get the words out. “It’s all right,” he whispers softly, “You don’t have to go into details, not until you’re ready.”

More tears course down her cheeks but she nods. He’s surprised when she continues after angrily drying her face with the back of her hand. “Even right at t he end, when they were nearly done when, when they had done so many horrible things to me...When I saw that, that _thing_ in my father’s hand,” she gestures towards the floor where Azriel had thrown the ash nail after pulling it from her body and shudders. “I, I begged him not to. I was his daughter, his _daughter_ , and I was afraid and in agony and I...I really didn’t think that he would do it. I thought that he would stop, I...He was my father, my family, I- I was so stupid, Az.”

“Trusting the people who are supposed to love and care for you is not stupid, Morrigan,” he murmurs softly, giving her a gentle squeeze, “It’s natural. You did nothing wrong.”

At that she burrows her head against his chest, wrapping her arms around him, and begins to cry without restraint into his flying leathers. Azriel holds her through it, trying to calm her down and comfort her as best he can. “You’re free now,” he whispers softly, “You’re free.”  

Once she’s regained a little bit of her composure he says quietly, tentatively, “You can choose your own family now, people who will care for you and keep you safe. The way, the way I chose Rhys and Cassian.”

A small, watery smile manages to bloom on Mor’s bruised face at that. It’s a relief, somehow, to know that she hasn’t lost that, to know that, even after everything, she can still smile up at him in that way that makes his heart slam against his ribs in its desperate attempt to reach her. “I’d like that,” she whispers hoarsely.

“You will never be at their mercy again, Mor,” he growls to her, “Never. We will keep you safe, Cassian and Rhys and I, we will keep you free. You will never be alone again.”

Tears pour from her eyes once more but this time he knows that they come from a place of gratitude not grief. Tentatively, hoping it will be enough, Azriel gently squeezes her hand. Reaching up she presses a tentative kiss to his cheek before she settles back down again. Az blinks at her but recovers himself after a moment. Gathering himself, he makes to scoop her up and set her back down on the bed before leaving her and returning to his sentry position on the chair outside her room.

As she senses him starting to rise however Mor tightly grips his forearm, “Stay, please,” she rasps out, her eyes wide again, ringed with white fear. “I, I feel safe when you’re here with me,” she breathes, turning furiously red at the confession.

Hesitating, Azriel settles himself again then slowly spreads his wings and carefully folds them around the two of them. Mor gasps slightly as the taut membrane envelopes them and he tenses, ready to lift them away, but then he feels her nod and lets them slide into place, shielding her from the world, keeping her safe here with him.

Slowly, her ragged breathing begins to even out. Azriel patiently remains with her, cocooning her in her wings, doing what little he can for her. Once he suggests leaving to find her something that might help, food or water or extra blankets, but she shakes her head violently and clings to him. He rests a scarred hand between the valley of her shoulder blades and softly reassures her that he’s not going anywhere.

Azriel stays with her as her body softens against his, melting in to match the hard lines of him until they fit almost too well together. He stays with her as her crying finally subsides and a tender, peaceful quiet descends over them. He stays with her as she goes still against him, safe nestled against him, trusting him, on some instinct he doesn’t understand. He stays with her until her breathing deepens and she falls asleep in his arms.

Just as she begins to drift off he whispers a promise into the waiting silence before them. “I will never let them hurt you again, Morrigan.”

**** 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for sticking with this fic until the end! I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know one way or the other if you've got a moment?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This fic has been a long time in the making and I'd love to know what you guys thought of it if you have a moment?


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